France has a particular duty in the fight against the far right both because of the luminous and the dark episodes of its history.

France is the country of Human Rights but also of the Dreyfus' Affair and of the agreement with Nazi Germany decided by the regime, which represented it.France is the country of revolutionary ideas that have helped many countries to progress but also of the recent leaders who made regrettable declarations such as the accusation of the Jewish people as being "confident and domineering" (Ch. De Gaulle), or of a relationship with the former secretary general of the police of Vichy (F. Mitterrand). Today we are witnessing a strong resurgence of far right and neo-Nazi activity tolerated, allowed or supported by certain Member States of the European Union. Some of these countries which advocate far right values within the European Union, are willing to use Nazism and the Holocaust for comparative purposes in order to assert their glory, strengthen their ultranationalism and justify their policy of hatred, or even in some cases dictatorial steps.

Some Member States of the European Union are trying to impose their beliefs on the entirety of the European Union whose ethical subjugation could reduce a credibility that has been already substantially affected; we hope that the Nobel Peace Prize granted to the European Union will be a reminder regarding its ethical obligations breaking with the mindset that prevailed in Munich, in particular with respect to its own Member States:

• In 2011 Hungary was allowed to chair the Council of the European Union despite its dictatorial regime. This is incompatible with the conditions of admission to the European Union.

• In 2013 it will be the turn of Lithuania to chair the Council of the European Union at the risk of tarnishing the image of the entire European Union.

Audronius Azubalis, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, has not hidden his intention to instrumentalize the Presidency of the Council of the European Union to propagate the convictions of his ultranationalist country that has glorified in 2012 the memory of a former prime Minister who was controlled by the Nazis in 1941 and signed directives for the carrying out of transfer of citizens of Jewish origin to a concentration camp and a ghetto. The country has also refused to prosecute the war criminals who came back in Lithuania in the nineties. This country also questions the uniqueness of the Nazism barbarity and of the Holocaust, as a result of its belief in a number of ultranationalist and far right values.

In addition, Lithuania has just started a new crusade against its Polish minority which had the courage to stay in Lithuania after 1945.This is in stark opposition to the rules of protection of minorities enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.

A majority of Poles had already left the country after WWII because of the xenophobic persecution they suffered from a number of Lithuanians.

We request you to support a very simple declaration of two sentences that any Democrat should approve without any hesitation because it is based on a clear obviousness now unfortunately challenged even within the European Union:

"We, elected representatives of the French people, oppose any declaration that would undermine the historic uniqueness of Nazi barbarity and of the resulting Holocaust as well as the right of the victims of Nazism to a day of remembrance independent of other events . Attempts to glorify in any manner the memory of Nazism, its supporters, local perpetrators and collaborators on the territory of the European Union will always encounter our firm opposition. "

Lithuania has boosted provocations in organizing on May 20, 2012, thirty-eight years after his death, the national reburial of Juozas Ambrazevicius, the former prime minister of a government that collaborated with Nazi Germany with the support of the "LAF" Lietuvos Aktyvistu Frontas (Lithuanian Activist Front). The LAF was created by Lithuanians living in Berlin on the basis on a large number of Nazi values, called for the ethnic cleansing of Lithuania and expected to create an "independent" Lithuania under Nazi German protection. The founder section in Berlin instigated hatred of Jews and Poles and thus spurred his supporters in Lithuania to participate to the extermination of Jews and to the exaction against the Poles of Lithuania. The outrageous reburial was preceded by another distressing step on June 6, 2009 when President Vladas Adamkus awarded posthumously Juozas Ambrazevicius with the highest national distinction: The Grand Cross of the Order of Grand Duke Gediminas.

Above the national reburial of Juozas Ambrazevicius on 20 May 2012

On 25 September 2012, the following US Congressmen have protested against this national reburial: Brad Sherman, Henry Waxman and Howard Berman.

The Germans needed Juozas Ambrazevicius for one month and a half in order to sign the first protocols of deportation and internment of the Jews of Lithuania.

Indeed Juozas Ambrazevicius was Prime Minister of the Provisional Government of Lithuania from June 23 to August 5, 1941 i.e. under the German occupation. On 5 August 1941, the Germans abolished this government since they did not intend to give independence to Lithuania as expected by the LAF; they preferred to integrate several members of this government in the "Generalbezirk Litauen" (German headquarters of Lithuania) depending on Reichskommissariat Ostland. Most of the staff of the "Generalbezirk Litauen" were Lithuanians under German command. The Germans intended to integrate Lithuania into their "Ostland" after Germanization to be achieved by thousands of settlers who were expelled in 1945.

Over this short period Juozas Ambrazevicius signed the protocols to achieve the following steps requested by the Germans:

1. “All means” against Jews but avoiding executions in public

2. Setting up a concentration camp for Lithuanian Jews

3. All Kaunas Jews to be herded into the ghetto of Vilijampolė

Below the photo of the document ordering the deportation of Jews from Kaunas signed by Juozas Ambrazevicius and the photo of its achievement under the supervision of "white armbanders " who were armed civilians and supporters of LAF.

DICTATORIAL LAWS OF 2010 AND 2011

1- ACT OF JUNE 15, 2010 - SECTION 1702 LIMITING THE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION AND MOVEMENT

The section 1702 of the Criminal Code of Lithuania dated 15 June 2010 sentences to a heavy fine and up to two year imprisonment, anyone who would express an opinion that may be deemed offensive to Lithuania because it would diverge from the official view of the government regarding the history of Lithuania during World War II and the Soviet era.

For ultranationalist, xenophobic and antisemitic reasons Lithuania obfuscates as much as possible, the Holocaust (around 96% of Lithuanian Jews were exterminated by the Germans and Lithuanians i.e. 212,000 people) and the flight from Lithuania triggered by many Lithuanians of approximately 250,000 of their fellow citizens of Polish origin forced to go to Poland at the end of the war.

Lithuania prefers to refer only to about 250,000 people temporarily or permanently deported to labor camps out of which 133,000 people were arrested from 1944 to 1946. Lithuania has decided to call "genocide" this deportation which is in fact a "crime against humanity" with the purpose that the Holocaust of 96% of the Jewish population should rank second as it can be noticed in Lithuania (see development in Section 9). The figures of the alleged Lithuanian Genocide is paradoxically increased by integrating the number of Poles who fled the Lithuanians and sometimes by the Jews who were exterminated by Germans and Lithuanians and thus might mix up partly and indecently "the perpetrators and the victims".

Numerous events and demonstrations organized by the far right in Lithuania leave no doubt about the meaning of section 2170 of the Act of 15 June 2010. This law aims to block free historical research and is an impediment to both "freedom of expression" but also "freedom of movement" on the territory of the European Union since Lithuania is part of it and where Europeansor any others citizens may be arrested and imprisoned if they do not share the official opinion of this country. As a consequence we might be imprisoned in Lithuania for having written this note.

Freedom of expression and movement should normally be guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union that Lithuania has signed.

2-ANTI-POLISH LAW OF MARCH 2011

The Lithuanian people of Polish origin and living in the Vilnius area are there for many centuries and should be considered "as originating in Lithuania as well as much as the Lithuanians." Poland and Lithuania (which included Belarus until 1793) formed a single country for more than four centuries from 1386 to 1795: the Polish-Lithuanian Union followed by the Republic of the Two Nations. The current Lithuanian ultranationalism, which originates in movements such as the LAF, is impervious to the idea that Lithuania could be as a result of its history, a multicultural and multilingual country.

The Polish population of Vilnius should have the right to retain their schools and their teaching as it has always existed and which is today questioned.

Since 2011 the SEIMAS (Lithuanian Parliament) is trying to impose a reform of Polish schools "without any consultation with families and teachers' and tension rose throughout the year 2012.

The Lithuanian parliament pretends that it wants to facilitate the integration of Polish people at work and in cultural life but it seems rather to be motivated by the fact that they are the main population in some districts of the Vilnius region. Parliament adds that the Polish schools are not good and do not teach Lithuanian language properly while 71.8% of people graduated of Polish schools and candidates to universities were admitted, representing a higher rate than those of Lithuanian schools (reference: the open Letter of Polish parents). The new law imposes the superiority of Lithuanian schools that will result in the closure of Polish schools whose students may be integrated in Lithuanian schools. The remaining Polish schools will be obliged to fully teach and organize the exams in Lithuanian.

This law imposes a forced Lithuanisation of a minority strongly linked to its particular identity in "the city that has always been theirs". The result of this intolerance might be a de facto incentive for Poles to leave precisely as it occurred after WWII when approximately 53% of the Poles fled Lithuania.

MAIN EVENTS IN LITHUANIAS SINCE THE NINETIES

1-THE FATE OF THE WAR CRIMINALS WHO CAME BACK TO LITHUANIA IN THE NINETIES

At least fifteen Lithuanian Nazi war criminals, who had fled to the United States under false identities were stripped of their U.S. citizenship in the nineties when they were discovered and had to return to Lithuania. "None of them was sentenced ". Only three of them were superficially prosecuted for their involvement in the Holocaust and in the two most serious cases the criminals were declared medically unfit to stand trial and were left free. These two criminals were the commander of the Lithuanian pro-German "SAUGUMAS" (Security Police) Aleksandras LILEIKIS and his deputy Kazys GIMZAUSKAS. The SAUGUMAS had assisted the Nazis from 1941 to 1944. The third case is also related to a member of the SAUGUMAS of the district of Vilnius; Algimantas DAILIDE; he was convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, but the judges refused to implement the sentence because he had to take care of his ailing wife.

2-THE SWASTIKA LEGALIZED IN LITHUANIA"IN 2010"

In 2010, the swastika was duly legalized in Lithuania as a national symbol by the Court of the city of Klaipeda. Lithuania became the sole country in Europe where the swastika can be publicly and legally displayed by all means as flags and armbands. It goes without saying that this decision is outrageous for the victims of Nazism and should be for everyone.

3-THE NEONAZI MARCHES ON INDEPENDENCE DAY

Every year on of independence Day, the neo-Nazis are officially allowed to parade on the main boulevard of Vilnius and the Police only represses the opponents to this indecent demonstration.

It should be recalled that on 22 June 1941, Lithuania had welcomed the Germans as liberators. This idea of the "Nazi Liberator" seems to be rooted in the minds of some people. Indeed Ricardas Cekutis, the public relations officer at the Research Center on Genocide, leader of the movement "Lithuanian patriotic Center"and regular organizer and participant to the neo-Nazi marches, likes to wear a shirt on which is printed "a German soldier looking at Vilnius" (source: Andrejus Zukovskis, Diena.lt, interview dated of 24 April 2011).

4- THE SUBSIDIES PAID TO THE RACIST ORGANIZATIONS

"THANK GOD, I WAS BORN WHITE"

A far-rightist and racist organization such as the "Patriotic Youth" receives state subsidies as participation to their expenses for their marches whose a slogan is "THANK GOD, I WAS BORN WHITE", and for their propaganda activities organized in the camp of Dieveniskès.

Henrikas Mickevicius, director of the Lithuanian Human Rights Watch. Institute, said that the state should not support organizations that spread the spirit of intolerance (see newspaper Eglė Samoskaitèc 28 July 2011).

5-THE RESEARCH CENTER AND THE MUSEUM OF GENOCIDE

This research center and the associated museum (both state subsidized) almost entirelyexcludes the Holocaust. A small "private" wooden house hard to find and called "Green House" is the sole museum of the Holocaust in Vilnius. Ricardas Cekutis, who is the public relations officer of the Research Center on Genocide is as already mentioned the leader of a far-rightist party told Diena.lt April 24, 2011: "The Jews play with matches on a powder keg ... if the Government does nothing, the people will act ... ".

One of the favorite words of Ricardas Cekutis is "TOLERASTE", which is a combination of the words "TOLERANT" and "PEDERASTE"to qualify the intellectuals and democrats "in the neo-Nazi vocabulary."

How can we seriously consider the Research Center and the Museum of genocide, when the public relations officer of the research center is a fanatic pro-Nazi?

How can we accept the section 2170 of the law dated of 21 June 2010 imposing a censorship on the interpretation of history since it only targets those that the neo-Nazis name TOLERASTES in order to force them to remain silent under threat of arrest and imprisonment?

6- THE CONFERENCE AT THE SEIMAS HONORING THE "LAF"

A conference was organized on 28 and 29 June 2011, in the main chamber of the Lithuanian Parliament "SEIMAS. "The main purpose of this conference was the sanitization of the Lithuanian Activist Front" LAF " presented as a group of patriots despite their supporters included the white armbanders who were the originators of the Pogroms which took place from 25 to 29 June 1941. These pogroms were the beginning of the Holocaust in Lithuania to which many LAF supporters continued to participate after the arrival of the Germans. The conference was opened by MP Irena Degutienė, who also honored in her offices, the makers of a documentary glorifying the "LAF".

7-THE LITHUANIAN AUTHORITIES HUNTING HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS

The Lithuanian authorities including the judges and police are still investigating survivors of the Holocaust who fought the Nazis. The reason for this is that many survivors had revealed that people who are today considered to be national heroes, actually participated in the perpetration of the Holocaust.

The Lithuanian authorities have created troubles in the life of very elderly people including Fania Yocheles Brantsovsky who was born in 1922; Dr. Rachel Margolis who was born in 1921, was a resistance heroine and is afraid to go back today in Lithuania; Dr Yitzhak Arad born in 1926 who was an anti-Nazi partisan and was accused of war crimes by Lithuania in 2006 but the suspicions were partly dropped in 2008. On 30 August 2011the Lithuanian police requested the extradition from Israel of Joseph Melamed born in 1925 and who is the current director of the Association of Lithuanian Jews in Israel.

8-ANTANAS SAKALYS , A LITHUANIAN ARTIST OF HATRED

Source:DefendingHistory.com - Editor, Professor Dovid Katz

This artist creates decorated envelopes which are on sale in the main post offices. An exhibition was organized on 27 September 2012 in the premises of the University of Vilnius. We present hereunder few artistic envelopes created by Antanas Sakalys.

A-ANTISEMITISM

This “art envelope” reproduced the antisemitic headline of the national daily VAKARO ZINIOS (evening news) of 21 December 2011.

Among the numerous debtors to the social security system, Vakaro Zinios has selected and decided to make its headline on the House of Manachem directed by the Rabbi Sholom Krinsky and wrote in large letters: “Let’s live like brothers—and pay like Jews!” In other words don't pay.

“Let’s live like brothers—and pay like Jews!”

They also wrote that the fate of social security in the hands of the offices of the “Sharashkins” meaning a fake organization in Russian slang.

Attacks against the Gaon of Vilnius- 1720 -1797

Translation of the text of Antanas Sakalys

Ben Saliamon Zalman Elijas (Vilnius Gaon) 1720-1793. A legendary personality. Explicator of the Talmud and Zionist of racist persuasion. He left behind no academic works, but phrases such as “that Lithuania is God’s gift to the Jewish people,” which gradually was destined for implementation, could belong to him. His intellectual followers strove to populate the small towns, created businesses, set up trade and medicine. (1) They created the social democratic Bund(2).This later become the Communist party through which there was the attempt to create Litbel, a Lithuanian-Belarusian state (3). After driving them out of Vilnius and following the creation of the Republic of Lithuania, the Bund was disbanded. Nevertheless in Lithuania, they didn’t give up that “gift of God,” and tried to incite riots in 1926. In 1939 they experienced the coming of the Soviets and only then understood they would have to move to the Jewish Autonomous Republic (this was Stalin’s gift)(4). After World War II they had to reorient and with the help of Great Britain they had to take a different gift: Arab Palestine (5).

Our Comments

1-For the author this is surprisingly negative2-The relationship between a rabbi who died in 1797, a secular labor Union and the Communist Party is of course ridiculous.3- The LitBel is the abbreviated name of the Union of Lithuania and Belarus. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania had always included Belarus until the partition of Poland and Lithuania in 1795. A Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania and Belarus was also created in 1919 for 7 months by the USSR This Republic has disappeared as a result of the Russo-Polish war. The combination of Lithuania and Belarus has existed for several centuries by the will of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.4-This is the Birobidzhan, an Oblast of 36,000 km2 created in 1934 by Stalin near the Chinese border, and which includes now 2327 Jews in a population of 191,000 inhabitants.5-The British Mandate was formalized in 1920 by the League of Nations, which is prior to the Second World War and the creation of Birobidzhan.

B-GLORIFICATION OF PRO-NAZI CRIMINAL WARS

Hereunder an envelope to the glory of Aleksandras LILEIKIS, head of the pro-Nazi Security Police, the SAUGUMAS, from 1941 to 1944. He fled to the USA but was found and expelled in 1996. He came back to Lithuania where he was declared medically unfit to stand trial after many delaying procedures by sympathetic prosecutors and was left free.

Translation of the text of Antanas Sakalys:

On 26 September 2000, A. Lileikis, terrorized by the racist Zionists(1), died. Even after death they attempted to slander and belittle him. And this is being done with the agreement of the Lithuanian government. Lileikis’s contribution serving the nation in the security of free Lithuania and celebrating Lithuanian-ness in the USA and working in publishing, is gigantic.

Let the memory of a patriot of the people remain bright!

(1)Our comment: Jews according to the new antisemitic language

C-LITHUANIA HUNTING HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS TODAY

While Lithuanian judges were munificent towards the pro-Nazi criminals, they attempted to pursue several Holocaust survivors including Dr Yistrakh Arad, the former director of Yad Vashem Institute. He is caricatured on the envelope below pell-mell with the flags of USSR, USA and Israel probably to denounce a Jewish-American-Russian-Communist world conspiracy . He was accused in 2006 by Lithuania of war crimes but the suspicions were partly dropped in 2008.

Translation of the text of Antanas Sakalys:

The “Expert” with Blood on his Hands

This is a former NKVD red partisan hitman who terrorized completely innocent Lithuanian peasants. He wrote of his bloody campaigns in the book “The Partisan: From the Valley of Death to Mount Zion.” He even received a medal from Moscow’s puppet J. Paleckis(1) for his sadistic “campaigns.” Now this Israeli general wearing the shadow of a Communist terrorist is a consultant for the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) operating in the USA(2). This is how cases without foundation against A. Dailidė, A. Lileikis and other Lithuanian patriots are born.

Our comments:

(1) Justas Paleckis signed the Act of Independence of Lithuania on 11 March 1990 and is currently a member of the European Parliament and a member of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party.

(2) The target of this office is to find the war criminals

D- PATRIOTISM: FAR RIGHT AND RACISM

One of the slogans of the Patriotic Youth: "Thank God -I was born white"

Translation of the text of Antanas Sakalys:

Parade of the Lithuanian Patriotic Youth to commemorate March 11. This was the day when the independent Lithuania state was restored a second time.

Patriotic Youth: The Guarantee of the People’s Independence

E-HOMOPHOBIA

Antanas Sakalysclaims that European Union conspires against Lithuania by introducing gay rights.

Translation of the text of Antanas Sakalys:

At a session of the European Union, Lithuania’s homophiles, seeking to encourage gay and lesbian activity...... voted in favor of legalizing the actions of sexual anomalies. What sort of moral authorities do we have in the European Union! And further, what sort of representatives of a Catholic country! Genetic anomalies are a matter for doctors. ..

7- JEWISH-COMMUNIST CONSPIRACY

Translation of the text of Antanas Sakalys:

June 14 Day of the Genocide of the Lithuanian people. After the Soviets occupied Lithuania in 1940, the repressive apparatus was set up under the leadership of V. Dekonozov, V. Niunka, Ch. Aizen and L. Gira. Moscow sent “brotherly support”: 20 especially “highly trained” specialists with V. Merulov in charge. The Moscow “cadres”—P. Gladkov, D. Todes, P. Shvartsman—were in command of the heads of the Security Department, A. Sniečkas and A. Guzevičius. Besides these leaders, the Special Commission was composed of: ...........list of names(1)

Antanas Sakalys adds: After 1944, when the Russians had again occupied Lithuania, there was a flood of “international” specialists, and to fortify their activities 4,500 Jews who had fled and 1,200 other Soviet repression notables were returned. After all the terror and genocide, Lithuania had lost (2) a half million residents and about 70,000 had managed to immigrate to the West to save their own lives.

Our comments:

(1)Myth of the Jewish communist conspiracy: A list of about fifty selected names chosen for their being presumably Jewish-sounding.

This artistic envelope seems to be inspired by the Lithuanian Poster of 1941 below denouncing the collusion between the Jews and Stalin "Stalinas ir Zydai."

9-MISUSE OF THE WORD GENOCIDE BY LITHUANIA OBFUSCATING THE HOLOCAUST AND THE EXPULSION OF POLES IN WHICH MANY LITHUANIANS WERE INVOLVED

Lithuania has suffered a very heavy repression during the Soviet era that has constituted "a crime against humanity";however Lithuania claims that its people have been a victim of genocide while the figures and testimonies show that this word is not proper at all.The trivialization of the word genocide is detrimental to all the victims of real genocides.

A-FIGURES: Demographics

Source: French scientific portal 1992 - "Persée"- Population, 47th year, nr 1, 1992 pages. 211-218.demography of Lithuania by V. Stankuniene and A. Sipaviciene both of the Institute of Economics, and of the Academy of Sciences.

Persée is a program of electronic publishing of scientific reviews in social sciences and humanities. The entire collection of printed journals is digitized and put the online portal that provides advance possibilities of research these. The documentation is selected to ensure the consistency and the scientific feature of the editorial supply of the portal.

Population of Lithuania and composition by origin

Population

Urban

Lithuanians

Poles

Russians

Jews

1923(1)

2 620 000

17.7%

1 813 000

401 000

66 000

217 000

1939(2)

3 084 000

21.9%

2 134 000

472 000

77 000

256 000

1941(3)

220 000

1945(3)

8 000

1959(1)

2 711 000

38.6%

2 150 000

230 000

230 000

24 000

1970(1)

3 128 000

50.2%

2 506 000

241 000

269 000

25 000

1979(1)

3 398 000

60.7%

2 718 000

248 000

302 000

14 000

1989(1)

3 690 000

68.0%

2 924 000

258 000

347 000

11 000

(1)Census - except in 1939

(2)Figures after the reintegration of Vilnius and its surroundings in Lithuania,

estimate of population by origin in 1939 according to the repartition of 1923

96% of the Jewish population was exterminatedby the Germans and by many Lithuaniansduring World War IIi.e.212 000 people out of a population of 220 000 people who remained in Lithuania when the Holocaust started , which is the highest extermination rate in all Europe.

The Holocaust in Lithuania was achieved by bullets as the result of the combined action of the following people:

1-Einsatzgruppe A.

2- Lithuanian civilian white armbanders and supporters of the LAF

3-SAULIU SAJUNGA– Lithuanian National Sharpshooters Association. They were civilians and played a substantial part in the annihilation of Lithuanian Jewry.

4-Ten of the twenty fiveBattalions of the Lithuanian Auxiliary Police; they actively participated in the mass murder of Jews in Lithuania and outside its borders, primarily in Belarus.

The demographic figures of Lithuania changed after the integration of Vilnius area (named Republic of Central Lithuania) given to Lithuania by the USSR in 1939 . This area was eventually included in Poland in 1920 and this time Vilnius was mostly populated by poles and Jews.

As a result of this retrocession, the Jewish population of Lithuania increased to around 256 000 people in 1939 out of which approximately 30 000 persons fled mostly to Russia to escape German troops in 1941.The remaining 220 000 people were victims at 96% of the Holocaust.

The few survivors were hidden or on the front line and amounted to 8000 persons. The figures increased to 24,000 in 1959 partially as the result of the return of the Jews, who fled to Russia in 1941.

From 1945 to 1959 approximately 250,000 people(source: V. Stankuniene and A. Sipaviciene) mostly Lithuanians, were deported to the USSR out of which 133 000 were arrested from 1944 to 1946 (source V. Terleckas).

Many Lithuanians had seen the Germans as liberators and many of them openly collaborated with the Germans. There was virtually no Lithuanian anti-Nazi resistance. Resistance in Lithuania included mainly Poles and partisans of various origins (Russians, Byelorussians, Jews). The Polish resistance had to endure the combined offensive of LVR - Lietuvos Vietine Rinktine or Litauische Sonderverbände meaning Lithuanian Defense Forces and of the German troops. Expulsions of Poles took place in the Vilnius area, Polish villages were destroyed by the Lithuanian police and civilian accomplices in retaliation against the Polish resistance.

After the war many Lithuanians opposed the integration of their country in the USSR, suffered from a repression which was particularly heavy under Stalin (deceased on 5 March 1953).

From 1939 to 1959, the population of Lithuania decreased from 3 084 000 people to 2 711 000 people i.e. 373 000is essentially due to:

1-The extermination of212 000 Jews

2-The migration of approximately250 000 Poles who fled the mal treatment of Lithuanian people and went to Poland.

Moreover the weak increase of the Lithuanian population from 1939 to 1959 which is inferior to the natural increase is probably due to the deportation of approximately 250 000 persons to the labor camps.

From 1959 to 1970 the Lithuanian population increased by 1.6% p.a. from 2 150 000 to 2 506 000. According to V. Stankuniene and A. Sipaviciene the net natural rate increase was 1.2% p.a. in the nineteenth century and decreased substantially in twentieth century. As the matter of fact the population increase from 1979 to 1989 was 0.76% p.a. The 1.6% might be due to returns from labor camps mentioned by various writers.

The Genocide alleged by the Lithuanians seems thus to be the sum of the Poles who fled Lithuania and of the deportations in the labor camps i.e. 500 000 persons as mentioned by Antanas Sakalys.

Figures of more than 700 000 persons are also mentioned and should include the 212 000 Jews victims of a genuine Genocide.

As we mentioned it the deportation of 250 00 people to the labor camps is a crime against humanity but not a genocide which should involve as ultimate "target" the extermination of the whole Lithuanian people. We talk of genocides in the case of Jews, Armenians, Gypsies, Bosnians, Tutsis.

The Lithuanians were 2 134 000 in 1939 representing 69% of Lithuania's population and increased to 2 907 293 in 1989 representing 83.4% of the population.

The world's Jewish population is still under the shock of the Holocaust with a total number of 13 500 000 in 2005 as compared to 16 400 000 in 1939.

The Lithuanian xenophobic and racist policy during the World War II against the Jews and the Poles was a real success since the Jews were almost all killed and 53% of the Poles left the country.

We suspect that the misuse of the word Genocide by Lithuania might target to tarnish the memory of the Holocaust by anti-Semitism and ultranationalism and might also aim to obfuscate the participation of many Lithuanians in the perpetration of the Holocaust (see section 10) and in the expulsion of the Poles .The word genocide was created in 1944 by a Polish-born American professor of law and was considered as particularly proper during the Nuremberg trials, but because it was a too new word, it was not mentioned in the indictments.

B-TESTIMONY

Source: France-Catholique.fr - France- 2011

Excerpts from the interview of Professor Vladeck Terleckas (former Lithuanian Member of Parliament)

Vladeck Terleckas speaks of the life of his brother Antanas Terleckas imprisoned and deported to a labor camp. The France-Catholique's journalists saw the name of Antanas Terleckas in the Genocide Museum of Vilnius.

The Genocide Museum in Vilnius is dedicated to the alleged genocide suffered by the Lithuanians and excludes the Holocaust, except for one basement room added in late 2011 under international pressure , which itself glorifies the LAF and misrepresents the outbreak of the Holocaust.

Anatanas Terlekas is considered as a victim of the genocide despite the fact that he did not die of it as we may see it on the picture below taken in 1991 with his brother Vladeck Terlekas and published by France-Catholique.

Picture of Antanas Terleckas and Vladas Terecklas together in 1991

We recall that the word genocide means the death of a people and as a result a victim of genocide cannot be alive.

Vladas Terecklas speaks very objectively and honestly of the genocide of the Jews and of the deportation and imprisonment of his brother because he was member of the League for the Independence of Lithuania, which was illegal during the Soviet era.

He indicates that 133,000 people were arrested until 1946 and 12,300 people were killed.

Moreover, he clarifies an important issue: His brother was arrested and put in prison several times and thereby suffered much more than the people sent to labor camps according to Professor Vladas Tercklas; headds that Prison is a much heavier punishment than labor camps and his brother knew both prison and labor camps.He was sentenced to 3 years' jail in 1958, one year in 1972, and 3 years in 1980 followed by 5 years in labor camp.

10-NEW CLARIFICATIONS ON THE SPECIFICITY OF THE HOLOCAUST IN LITHUNIA

EXCERPT OF THE ARTICLE OF DR EFRAIM ZUROFF

Holocaust Studies - HAARETZ - SEPTEMBER 2012

Killed by their neighbors

Expulsion and Extermination:

Holocaust Testimonials from Provincial Lithuania, by David Bankier. Yad Vashem,

It took more than six decades, but a unique collection of survivor testimonies about Lithuanian collaboration in the Holocaust is finally available to the public. Its blood-chilling accounts only make more disturbing another book, which seems dedicated to minimizing the collaboration and the ongoing denial of the phenomenon to this day

The Kuniuchowsky collection of testimonies of Holocaust survivors from the provincial towns and villages of Lithuania first came to my attention more than 30 years ago. At the time, I was working as a researcher in Israel for the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, looking for first-hand evidence of the mass murders that had been carried out in various locations in provincial Lithuania. Since there is relatively little information about, and few survivors from, these communities, this material was extremely valuable. Even more important, Leyb Kuniuchowsky, an Alytus-born engineer who had survived the Kovno Ghetto, had made a determined effort to record the names of all the numerous Lithuanians who had participated in the murders, making his collection a resource of potentially unique significance in the efforts to bring these Nazi war criminals to justice.

The problem was that for many years, Kuniuchowsky had refused to make it available to researchers, because he insisted on publishing the collection in its entirety, and no institution or organization was willing to do so. It was only in 1989, almost a decade after I began trying to obtain access to the testimonies, which had been recorded during the first three to four years after the end of the war, that Dov Levin of Jerusalem, the leading expert on the Holocaust in the Baltics, finally convinced Kuniuchowsky to donate his archives to Yad Vashem. And it is only now, another 20 years afterward, that parts of this unique resource have finally been published, edited by the late David Bankier, the former head of Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research, with the assistance of Holocaust researcher Ben-Tsiyon Klibansky.

The inexcusable delay in bringing selected portions of these testimonies to the knowledge of the public was not without serious consequences, most notably in Lithuania, where the government has systematically tried to minimize or hide the unusually extensive participation of local Nazi collaborators in the annihilation of the country’s Jews. More than 96 percent of them were killed in the Holocaust, with almost all the murders carried out locally, in the vicinity of the Jews’ residences, with the majority of the participants Lithuanians. This collection clearly unmasks distortions of the historical narrative of the Shoah by chronicling the numerically dominant role played by Lithuanians in the mass murders, many of which were carried out without any German or Austrian participation at all, and by naming and identifying almost 1,300 local perpetrators. In Bankier’s words, the value of these testimonies is that “they identify those who humiliated, abused and tortured [the Jews], pillaged their belongings, ejected them from their homes and, in the end, massacred their families.”

In order to maximize the value of the testimonies, the book begins with an introduction about Leyb Kuniuchowsky and his collection, and then provides a concise summary of the annals of provincial Lithuanian Jewry from the country’s independence after World War I until the destruction of these communities during the Holocaust. It is followed by a more in-depth treatment of the various stages of persecution and murder of the provincial Jews, using excerpts from the testimonies to illustrate the trials and tribulations suffered by the Jewish inhabitants of the more than 200 Lithuanian towns and villages that had Jewish communities. Starting with the initial days of the German occupation, the book recounts in vivid detail the imposition of forced labor, the plunder of Jewish property, the process of ghettoization and concentration, and ultimately the mass annihilation of Lithuania’s Jews, with additional chapters devoted to the role of the local non-Jewish population, focusing on the local Nazi collaborators who did the actual killing.

In these chapters, the unique historical significance of these testimonies becomes readily apparent, as they provide critical dimensions in vivid detail of the tragic fate of approximately half of Lithuanian Jewry, elements that are missing from the pertinent official German and Lithuanian documentation. While the latter give us important information about the administrative implementation of the Final Solution, they hide or ignore highly significant aspects of the murders, which are critical to our ability to construct an accurate narrative of the Holocaust in Lithuania, where the proportion of Jewish citizens killed among communities that had more than 1,000 Jews was the highest in Europe.

In every single provincial Jewish community, local collaborators were at least the majority, if not the only ones, doing the killing.

In this regard, the most pertinent of the themes that emerge from the witness testimonies is, first and foremost, the extent to which it was primarily Lithuanian volunteers who carried out the murders. In every single provincial Jewish community, local collaborators were at least the majority, if not the only ones, doing the killing. Thus, for example, in places like Lazdijai, Telsiai, Eisiskes, Joniskis, Dubingiai, Babtai, Varena and Vandziogala, there were no Germans present at all, and in Onuskis, Vilkaviskis and Virbalis, the only Germans at the murder sites were photographing the crimes.

‘Not worth a bullet’

A second theme that is evident in almost every testimony is the incredible cruelty displayed by the Lithuanian Nazi collaborators. In many cases, the preliminary stages of the Final Solution were accompanied by the brutal raping of Jewish women, including girls as young as 13 and 14 years old, and the public humiliation and torture of rabbis, as well as other Jews. It was also fairly common for Jewish infants to be murdered by having their heads smashed against stones or trees or being thrown alive into mass graves, since “the little ones were not worth a bullet,” as a Lithuanian “partisan” in Kudirkos-Naumiestis explained to an eyewitness.

A third theme is the nationalist context of the murders, which were viewed by many of the participants as acts of patriotism. Thus in Merkine, for example, a witness described the celebration staged by the murderers: “Their faces glowing, they sang happily and loudly the Lithuanian national anthem and other nationalist songs.” A similar scene took place in Zarasai, where a Polish witness related that the killers not only sang “Lithuanian national songs,” but were very “happy and satisfied.” These testimonies are reminiscent of the notorious murder of several dozen Jewish men in Lietukis Garage in Kaunas in late June of 1941, after which the large assembled crowd joined in singing the Lithuanian national anthem. It was this ultra-nationalism which undoubtedly fueled many of the acts of extreme cruelty by Lithuanians toward their Jewish neighbors, whom many Lithuanians erroneously perceived as communists.

A fourth and extremely important theme is that all strata of Lithuanian society voluntarily participated in the persecution and murder of the Jews. This is a fact that has systematically been hidden or ignored in Lithuania, where local participation in Holocaust crimes is usually attributed solely or primarily to “hooligans” or criminal elements. The sad truth that emerges clearly from these testimonies, however, is that participation in the mass murder of the Jews encompassed all strata of Lithuanian society, from the clergy and intelligentsia, including doctors and teachers, to the most marginal groups. Thus in Dubingiai, it was a young priest named Zrinys who led the partisans and organized the murders, and in Kuniuchowsky’s own town, as he himself noted, “Lithuanians of every social group and class participated in arresting, tormenting, bullying, robbing and eventually shooting the Jews of Alytus and those of the surrounding townlets in Alytus county.”

These elements complement the previously available documentation, which describes the murders from the perspective of the perpetrators and fails to fully acknowledge the extent of local complicity in, and responsibility for, the murders, as well as their more grotesquely cruel and bestial manifestations, all of which make the Kuniuchowsky collection a veritable treasure and indispensable resource for the study of the Holocaust in Lithuania........................

Dr. Efraim Zuroff is the chief Nazi hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of its Israel office. His most recent book, “Operation Last Chance: One Man’s Quest to Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice” (Palgrave/Macmillan) deals extensively with Lithuania’s failure to prosecute local Nazi war criminals and honestly confront the widespread complicity of Lithuanians in Holocaust crime.